Sneaking is op because you can start a battle with a sneak attack from Astarion and then the combat tracker is just Astarion and the enemies that saw him, or maybe only the little pillar of light that shows up.
Once Astarion gets locked into the combat tracker you can still maneuver everyone else around the enemies sight lines and get a few more alpha strikes in outside of the combat tracker. My paladin – in full plate – can walk right up to an enemy that’s frozen in the combat tracker as long as he doesn’t walk into the sight cone.
I beat dror, m, and gut in the goblin camp all without any of them taking any turns because I was able to alpha strike them into the dirt by just starting combat with the whole party sneaking, and then walking them right up outside of the combat tracker.
Is there a party that can really exploit this? Ranger, wolf barb, shadowharts +10 party sneak, and an assassin rogue? Just alpha strike everything.
So here’s my best understanding of the mechanics of the first turn of combat:
If you use an action to attack someone and it starts combat, everyone rolls initiative and takes turns in order. When your turn comes around, you’ll be missing that action–basically, you to use your action before everyone else got a turn, but that counts as your action for the round.
If you engage turn-based mode out of combat and your actions initiate combat, it works the same way. I this case, you might also have used some movement and/or your bonus action.
There are some abilities that grant all your actions, bonus actions, and movement back when you roll initiative (the Assassin gets this, I believe). So if you spec’d Astarion as an assassin, he’ll “break” the above rule and have all his resources available, even if he did a massive sneak attack to start combat.
Even in real time, if you do something like jump, you’ll notice your bonus action icon goes gray for a few seconds. If combat starts in that window, you’ll have already used that bonus action for that round.
Hope that helps clarify!
That makes a TON of sense actually. Thanks for the explanation!